Your Access to the Bible

Forth Session: Synoptic Gospels, Focus on Mark

 

Terms:

  1. Synoptic: self-explanatory, actually. Means synopsis, an episodic account.
  2. “Gospel” from god spel, the Old English for good news.
  3. In Greek the term is “evangelon,” good news…hence the 4 Evangelists.

 

Gospel

  1. A unique literary form. Not a biography, not a history, not a novel or short story.
  2. Purpose is to have reader/hearer come into relationship with Jesus.
  3. Two parts:
    1. Life and teaching of Jesus
    2. Passion/crucifixion, resurrection.
  4. Emphases possible:
    1. If emphasis is on cross and resurrection, then preceding material takes lesser role. Paul has almost nothing to say about Jesus’ teachings and miracles; it’s all about the cross.
    2. If emphasis is on earlier material, then the passion flows from the Incarnation (God become human in Jesus); found most clearly in Gospel of John.

 

Gospel of Mark

 

  1. Mark was a disciple of Peter, wrote down his accounts. This according to earliest church accounts; unanimity of opinion.
  2. Terse, abrupt. Shortest Gospel.
    1. See Mark chapter 1. Spirit doesn’t float like a bird from heaven at Jesus’ baptism but the heavens are rent open and the Spirit slams into Jesus and then propels him into the desert.
    2. Starts with grown John the Baptist and adult Jesus. No genealogies, no preambles, no birth story.
    3. Our Bibles all contain later additions to earliest Mark. Earliest dated documents end with terrified disciples after encountering angels at the empty tomb.
  3. “Tell no one.”
    1. Repeated 17 times. Not in the other Gospels.
    2. Termed “The Messianic secret.”
    3. See Mark 9: 9
    4. If purpose of Gospels is to bring the reader/hearer into relationship with Jesus, then purpose of ‘tell no one’ is to build tension, questions.
    5. Shifts dramatically when Jesus heads to Jerusalem for his passion. See Mark 8. 22
    6. Not Jesus being coy or mean; is Mark creating meaning.

 

Three things to remember:

1.      Gospel means good news and is a unique genre. Purpose of gospels is to bring hearer into relationship with Jesus.

2.      Mark’s Gospel is brief and terse.

3.      Mark’s ‘tell no one’ is not about Jesus mysteriously keeping himself from others; rather is Mark’s way of getting us to the end where we can know Jesus as Messiah.

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